


Wingroots

by trashcatontherooftop



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: AU Yeah AUgust (Miraculous Ladybug), Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Bad Parent Gabriel Agreste, DJWifi, Don't think about it too hard, F/F, F/M, Family tree shenanigans, Gen, Seelie Court, The author will be taking certain liberties, Time Travel Shenanigans, Unseelie Court, adrienette - Freeform, more tags to be added later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25637896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashcatontherooftop/pseuds/trashcatontherooftop
Summary: Half a day's ride from Paris, lost in the French countryside, lies the small but unusual village of Borbois, surrounded by forest. Adrien, heir to the Agreste estate, runs to the woods to escape his father's control, only to find himself trapped in a land of perpetual twilight, on the brink of war.Marinette, the baker's daughter and sole witness to his disappearance, determines to find him and bring him home safely, no matter the cost.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe
Comments: 16
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This AU is based on a story I've been trying, and failing, to finish for about... (counting... oh wow) 10 years now. I wanted to keep the original premise, with Miraculous characters instead of my own, which means I've had to shuffle things around a bit in terms of... relationships. You'll see.
> 
> Fun Fact: the oc Adrien replaces was a girl, and the oc Marinette replaces was a boy, so I've essentially gender-swapped my original story while turning it into fanfic.
> 
> Also, before you start: if you're looking for something that'll be updated reliably every day, maybe mark this one for later and wait until it's done. x) I'm tired, it's hot, and I have real life stuff going on that will definitely prevent me from updating on time. I can promise that I will finish this, but it might be finished in September rather than by the end of August.
> 
> Enjoy!

“It’s coffee,” Adrien said, offering the cup of dark, steaming liquid to a yawning Marinette.

The baker’s daughter glanced uncertainly between him and the cup.

“Cough-y?” she repeated. “As in, a drink that makes you cough? Or is it to cure a cough?”

Adrien laughed for a little too long at that, and when he recovered he found her smiling at him with an unusually open fondness. His heart skipped eagerly.

“C-O-F-F-E-E,” he spelled out, grinning. “It’s made from beans that are grown in the Americas, like chocolate. My father had some imported. It’s supposed to help inspire him and keep him alert, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it had other properties.”

He was still holding the cup and saucer out to her, and her hands came up hesitantly to take them from him. They were surprisingly soft.

“Wouldn’t he be - cross, if he found out you gave me some?” she asked.

Adrien’s mouth twisted as he glanced behind him. “He won’t find out,” he said, lowering his voice all the same. “And if he does, it’s me he’ll be cross with, not you. You can say I insisted,” he added with determination. “And I do. Insist, that is.”

Marinette flashed him one of her rare smirks, the ones that made him feel like they were proper friends, with no barriers of class or gender between them. He smiled back eagerly, and she raised the cup to her lips - only to grimace as she nearly spat it all over her pinafore. She swallowed with apparent difficulty, and stuck out her tongue.

“Ugh - so _bitter!_ ” she choked, and Adrien burst out laughing. “It wants at least three spoonfuls of sugar, and even then - you did this on purpose, didn’t you?”

“I did not,” Adrien said between giggles. “It already has sugar in it!”

“Well, it needs more,” Marinette retorted, wrinkling her nose at the offending beverage.

“It woke you up, didn’t it?”

The look she gave him sent him into another fit of giggles, and she was opening her mouth to retort, when she glanced towards the kitchen door behind him and snapped it shut again, suddenly pale under her freckles.

Adrien’s laughter died before he even turned his head. Nathalie, his mother’s maid, was standing in the doorway.

“Master Adrien, your father wishes to see you,” she said, her tone as clipped and cold as usual. “I’m sure Mademoiselle Dupain has other deliveries to make. You oughtn’t detain her.”

Adrien’s heart dropped into his stomach like a stone into hot water.

“Th-thank you, Adrien,” Marinette stammered, pushing the cup and saucer back into his hands. “I-I’ll be - I’ll - see you tomorrow!”

She was out the door before the end of her sentence, and Adrien sighed. Marinette always stammered when she was nervous, and Adrien’s father - and by extension, Nathalie - terrified her. It had taken Adrien years of effort to get her to come around to him.

Nathalie eyed the cup as he put it down. There was a good deal of coffee in the saucer, and some had landed on his hands - it was no longer hot enough to burn him, thankfully, but a few drops of brown stained the cuff of his shirt.

“Should I change first?” he asked.

“No,” Nathalie replied. “He wants to see you now.”

  
  


—

  
  


“…an investment and an expense that we can barely afford, and you go giving it out to the baker’s girl, of all people. Why not the scullery maid while you’re at it?”

Adrien bit back a hard laugh. They hadn’t had a scullery maid in years.

“I cannot abide this habit of talking to commoners as you would your peers. Your mother’s influence, despite her upbringing. Your grandfather, God rest his soul, would be horrified.”

Adrien had never met any of his grandparents, but from what he’d heard of his maternal grandfather, whose austere portrait loomed behind his father’s desk like a ghost of the past, it was probably better that way.

“Which is why, as of tomorrow, I shall be canceling house deliveries from the Dupain-Cheng bakery and asking Monsieur Gorri to go instead.”

The urge to laugh, even sarcastically, faded. Adrien blinked, swallowed, and nodded. He could probably ask Nino to sneak Marinette into the kitchen occasionally, or bring her notes. Perhaps she’d send back sweets. She’d done that once, when he was sick.

His father was still speaking, however.

“I called you here to discuss your engagement proposal to Mademoiselle Bourgeois, but now I wonder if she’ll even take you.”

He spoke disdainfully, as though expecting Adrien to be dismayed. Adrien  _was_ dismayed, but for a different reason.

“Chloé is practically my sister,” he pointed out. “I doubt she feels that way about me. We grew up together.”

“And why do you think that is?” Gabriel asked, his voice scathing.

_Because Borbois is a lost little town in the back end of nowhere and theirs is the only other family of any social consequence between here and Paris?_ Adrien almost replied, but didn’t.

Gabriel began to pace. “André and I made an agreement when you were both mere babes in arms, but I can sense his reluctance to follow through, after our recent difficulties. I’ve all but lost his wife’s favour. Mademoiselle Bourgeois’  _obvious_ affection for you is the only thing keeping his word true. You  _will_ return that affection, or at least make a good impression of it, at tea this Thursday. We cannot afford to wait any longer. I’ve already had to sack the gardener this week for lack of funds -”

“Nino?” Adrien interrupted before he could stop himself. His father glared at him, but Adrien didn’t care. “You sacked Nino?”

“I sacked _Monsieur Lahiffe,_ yes,” Gabriel corrected him. “We can no longer afford to keep your mother’s rose garden, and Gorri has agreed to maintain the kitchen garden himself. You must have heard the commotion when he was taking down the bushes.”

Adrien was not a violent boy, but sometimes he the urge to hit his father was overwhelming. He had been posing for his father two days ago when they’d heard his mother’s cries. He’d wanted to go and see what was happening, but Gabriel had pointed his paint brush at him ordered him to keep his position while Nathalie hurried away. Upon her return, he’d been sent to his room. Only much later had Adrien been told, vaguely, that his mother had had another one of her “fits”. He had not been informed as to why.

His father often did this - deprived Adrien of information only to mention later in a way that implied that he ought to have known it somehow. It was one the things Adrien disliked the most about him.

“I was unaware of the reason,” Adrien replied stiffly.

“Of course you were,” Gabriel sneered, as Adrien had known he would. He clenched his teeth as his father went on: “Your blithe ignorance holds no charm, Adrien. You are no longer a child. Let us hope that it does not put Mademoiselle Bourgeois off you. Although,” he added distastefully, “she does seem the type to lead her husband by the nose, so perhaps it shall be a blessing after all.”

  
  


—

  
  


Adrien stared into the mirror in his bedroom. His reflection stared darkly back, its eyes almost glowing in the light of the sun setting through the window behind him. His hair stood out in tufts where he’d pulled at it in his frustration. He looked like a wraith, small and pallid and not quite real, his tear-streaked cheeks the only spots of colour on him.

Despite his father’s earlier insistence that Adrien was no longer a child, Adrien had never been allowed to move out of the nursery, even when he’d begged. There had been a time when all Adrien had wanted was to grow up, emancipate himself from his father’s shadow, study and find a cure for what ailed his mother. The first step to doing that, he’d decided, would be to have his own room. Chloe had a whole suite of rooms. There were several unused bedrooms in the house. Surely he should have moved into one already. His father couldn’t keep him in the nursery forever.

All of these arguments had fallen on deaf ears. Gabriel had retorted than Adrien would be allowed to leave the nursery when he stopped behaving like a child, and that was the end of it. Adrien’s protests had been taken as proof of his immaturity, and he had been sent back to the nursery and kept locked in there without meals until the next day. Like so many other things he had given up on since his mother’s illness, Adrien had come to accept the nursery as his home until he left his father’s house. Today, he was thankful to have been kept there.

“You were right,” he whispered into the empty room.

The other reason Adrien had wanted to leave the nursery flickered behind his reflection like a shadow.

“Of course I was right,” it said. “I’m always right. I never lie, remember?”

The shadow’s eyes could have been the emeralds on his mother’s broach, pinned to a china doll on a chest behind him, except that emeralds did not glow that way.

“You manipulate,” Adrien countered.

The shadow - it looked vaguely like a cat - blinked innocently at him, and said nothing.

Adrien sighed. “I still don’t see how running away will solve anything,” he said.

“Parents sometimes need reminding of the love they hold for their children,” the shadow-cat replied. “Or, at least, how doomed they might be without them.”

“What do you get out of it?” Adrien asked for the first time.

Tiny fangs flashed white in the twilight. “Redemption,” it said. “You play a role. You’re used to that, aren’t you? And it won’t last long. Just long enough for your father to fret.”

“What role?”

“The role of my brother,” the thing said. “A lost boy stuck in Cat’s Court for long enough to forget who he was. A fae boy.”

Adrien frowned. “But I look nothing like you. Or any sort of fairy.”

Pointed ears flicked back and forth, considering. “That can be arranged. I’m not the best at that sort of glamour, but I’ll figure something out.”

Adrien squinted, trying to see who he was talking to. His eyes darted from one detail to the next, but each one slipped from his memory as soon as he stopped looking at it. All he knew was that it was cat-like.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“We’ve been through this,” the fae thing replied, impatience slipping into its voice. “No lies, remember?”

“Then tell me your name,” Adrien said, remembering the old stories. He watched green eyes grow wide, and his heart beat erratically in his chest. Those tales rarely ended well for the humans in them.

“You can call me Plagg,” it finally replied.

“No,” said Adrien. “Your true name. The one I can use to command you, if I need to.”

“And how will I know you won’t abuse it?” the thing snapped.

“How do I know you’re not trying to tempt me to my doom?” Adrien retorted with a humourless smirk.

Slit pupils made for a very effective eye roll, Adrien remarked to himself. “Ask me anything but that,” said the cat-fae.

Adrien considered for a moment, then said: “Tell me you won’t harm me, or willingly allow me to be harmed.”

There was a pause.

“I shall not harm you,” the cat said, enunciating each word carefully. “Nor shall I willingly allow you to be harmed.”

Adrien stared into its eyes, unable to remember any other detail of it. The cat had never lied to him as far as he knew. Indeed, aside from his mother, it seemed as though the cat fairy - Plagg - was the only person in Adrien’s life who systematically told him the truth.

“Alright,” Adrien said. “I’ll go with you. Tell me where to go.”


	2. Wings

Marinette was anxious. After receiving word that deliveries to the Agreste household would be canceled, she had gone to see her best friend Alya, hub of the Borbois grapevine, only to discover that Nino had also been laid off.

“He’s been taken on at the Bourgeois estate,” Alya reassured her that afternoon, as they watched her younger sisters and Nino’s brother play together on the village green. “It’s huge, and there are only so many gardeners in the village. They need all the help they can get”

“Oh,” said Marinette, feeling only a little relieved. “Well, at least Nino’s alright.”

“He’s not happy about it,” Alya remarked, frowning as the two girls taunted Christophe with a cricket they’d found. “Etta! Ella! What did I say about eating bugs!”

“We’re not eating it,” Ella clarified, her high voice carrying across the green. “You put it in your mouth and see how long you can keep it alive in there while it jumps about! My record is fifty-two seconds,” she added proudly, before Etta interrupted:

“Only because I count faster than you!”

“I’ll be right back,” said Alya, picking up her skirts to hurry after them. Whenever Marinette wondered what it might be like to have siblings, an afternoon spent minding Alya’s was always sufficient to convince her that being an only child was far more relaxing.

“Saved it,” Alya said a little breathlessly as she plopped back down on the blanket next to Marinette.

“Saved who? Christophe?”

“Well, him too, poor thing,” Alya smiled. “I meant the cricket.”

Marinette shuddered. “I don’t know how you can touch those things.”

Alya patted her shoulder. “You don’t grow up with a veterinarian for a father without developing a certain tolerance for creepy crawlies. Now, what were we talking about?”

“Nino being laid off,” Marinette reminded her.

“Oh, right. Well, he’s not happy at all, even though the Bourgeois are paying him half more than what he earned at the Agreste’s, because he thinks Gabriel Agreste is hurting Adrien somehow. Or isolating him. I don’t know, he was being very vague.” Alya frowned.

“I don’t know if he’d hurt Adrien - not physically at least,” Marinette said doubtfully. “Isn’t Adrien his muse? He couldn’t risk bruising or injuring him.”

“My mother said that Dame Emilie used to be his muse, but that was before she went mad - hey!” she rubbed her arm where Marinette had pinched it, though she hadn’t done it hard enough to hurt.

“Hush,” Marinette said. “The children will hear and talk. Dame Emilie is not mad, she’s just ill. Adrien told me.”

Alya rolled her eyes. “If you say so. Anyway, I think Nino’s just upset because he won’t get to see Adrien much any more. Like you,” she nudged Marinette, grinning.

“Don’t be silly,” said Marinette, turning away to rummage in her bag so that Alya wouldn’t see the pink spots she could feel blooming on her cheeks.

“Are you saying Adrien is _not_ your friend?” Alya craned her neck to peer at Marinette. She mock-gasped. “Could he be… a _lover_?”

“ _Alya!_ ” Marinette hissed, horrified at how hot her cheeks were getting. “We’re just friends!”

Alya giggled. “Well that’s quite the improvement compared to last year, when you were going on about it being improper or whatever nonsense Chloe had gotten into your head.”

“I’d rather not talk about my old mistress on such a nice day, if you don’t mind,” Marinette sniffed, and Alya cackled.

“You’ve gotten rather sassy,” she said. “I daresay it’s my good influence. Though if you’re not plotting a way to sneak Adrien those fancy macarons you make for him, then I haven’t done my job properly.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Marinette muttered. Her mind _had_ wandered over various means of contact, despite her own good sense. “Good influence, indeed,” she grumbled.

“Ah-ah, Mlle Bourgeois’ influence still remains I see. Come on, Marinette, I’m sure if you tried, you’d find some way to talk to him. You could sneak under the hedge at the edge of the estate, or into that old windmill they have on the hill…”

“The one that’s haunted?” Marinette shuddered.

“The one that’s _said_ to be haunted,” Alya corrected her. “I bet Gabriel Agreste invented that rumour himself, to keep us common folk from trespassing.”

“If he did, it doesn’t work,” Marinette remarked. “Alix goes there every Hallow’s Eve to tell ghost stories, and takes whichever boys she can convince to come with her.”

“Alix is a special case,” Alya pointed out. “She’s unpredictable.”

“She’s entirely predictable. Is there a rule you want breaking? Ask Alix!”

Alya laughed at that, and the pair had moved onto gossiping about the other inhabitants of their small but admittedly peculiar village.

Later, though, the anxiety returned, a nagging, needling knot in her gut. She volunteered to go and pick blackberries so her father could bake pies with them, and her mother thought it a great idea. If either of them guessed she was going to pick them at the edge of the Agreste estate, they had the grace not to mention it.

_This was a mistake_ , Marinette found herself thinking after a ten minutes of peering over the hedge. Being just close enough to see the house in the distance, but not close enough to see if Adrien was at the windows or in the garden, let alone communicate with him, was more frustrating than reassuring. She frowned at the bushes that separated the Agreste lands from the path next to the forest. There were fewer ripe blackberries than she’d thought there would be.

Marinette sighed and got to work, trying not to prick her fingers on the thorns. They were already scarred with all the pins and needles she’d stuck in them while sewing. Her latest project had been an embroidered handkerchief for Adrien - a silly idea for a gift, she now realized. Adrien probably had dozens of handkerchiefs embroidered with his initials, and by far better seamstresses than she, no doubt. Perhaps it was for the best that she’d never get to give it to him.

A lump rose in her throat at the thought, but before Marinette could scold herself, movement up on the hill caught her eye. She squinted towards the windmill. It was more of a ruin by now, the roof having caved in years ago, but the door leading into it was - according to Alix - always locked, and seemingly impervious to picking. Alix and her friends traditionally got in by climbing through the windows.

Except today, apparently. The door swung open silently, on well-oiled hinges, and out trotted - A cat?

“Minou,” Marinette murmured, and even though she was well over a fifty paces away, the cat turned its head and looked at her. Marinette blinked. Yes, that was definitely the cat she often gave scraps to behind the bakery. None of the other local cats had eyes so green they almost glowed. The cat blinked once, slowly, before turning to glance back towards the door. Marinette was just wondering how a cat had opened the door to the haunted windmill, when she heard a noise from inside it.

_Of course,_ she thought,  _the cat couldn’t have opened the door by itself. Someone must be in there!_

Her first thought was that it might be Gabriel Agreste himself, and she flinched and made as though to duck behind the hedge, before remembering that she had every right to be there, outside of the grounds, picking blackberries. Her stomach knotted with nerves nonetheless.

Then she remembered that Gabriel Agreste barely ever left his house, and thought it would probably be Alix. The knots unraveled a little, and took a few steps forward, trying to see inside.

The person who came out was neither Gabriel Agreste nor Alix Kubdel. It was Adrien, wearing the exact same clothes as he had that morning, with not a coat or a hat in sight.

“Adrien!” Marinette gasped his name, unable to believe her good luck. Just as she was looking for him!

But Adrien didn’t respond. He didn’t even glance at her. He had eyes only for the cat, which was trotting away from him, through a gap in the brambles and across the path in front of her. Adrien followed it, breaking into a trot as well and nearly stumbling down the hill. Marinette noticed the uncharacteristic red of his cheeks, how small and puffy his eyes looked, the downward curl of his mouth, and her throat closed around his name. She swallowed and tried again.

“Adrien!” she called, louder this time. He definitely should have heard that.

He didn’t even pause. The cat had disappeared into the forest, a shadow among shadows, and before Marinette could blink, Adrien was running in after it.

A thousand local tales of fairies, ghosts, and vanishing children were usually enough to keep the locals from entering the woods alone. Even Alix always took at least two local boys with her whenever she ventured in, and she never went far. Another rumour, confirmed by Nino, shoved itself to the forefront of Marinette’s mind: that once, long ago, Adrien had gotten lost in the woods, and his mother had forbidden him from going there ever since.

Panic gripped Marinette’s heart like a vice.

“Wait! Adrien -” she dropped her basket next to the hedge and ran to the edge of the forest, tripping wildly on her skirts and catching herself just in time to see him vanish into the trees down a narrow hunting trail. She picked up the offending garments and held them out of the way, then dived right in to follow him.

“Adrien! _Adrien!_ ” 

She called his name a few more times, but soon gave up to concentrate on picking her way through the undergrowth. Her skirts were soon muddy and torn in a hundred tiny places, and she tried not to think about how long it would take her to wash and patch them up. Far too late, it occurred to her to go back for help. One glance over her shoulder was enough to tell her that they had long since left the hunting trail. The light was fading fast, green and gold shadows turning deep, dark blue. Her heart lurched as she turned back to where Adrien had been, only to find herself quite alone. She scanned the trees frantically for movement, sound, anything that might -

_There!_ A flash of gold, the last rays of the setting sun reflected on his hair, and Marinette was running again, or trying to. The more she tried to follow, the thicker the forest became, and just as Adrien was disappearing into the trees again, Marinette cried out his name once more, desperately.

“ _Adrien!_ ”

He turned, eyes wide, and Marinette nearly wept with relief.

“Marinette?”

His voice sounded much closer than it should, but Marinette barely noticed. She struggled against brambles and tripped over tree roots, branches whipping her face, as though the forest were actively preventing her from reaching him.

There came a flash of green light, and Marinette stopped struggling for a moment to stare. Adrien wasn’t alone: there was a boy behind him, dark-skinned and dark-haired but with eyes greener even that Adrien’s, green enough to stand out against the gloom of the forest. He was about a head shorter than Adrien, and probably younger. Adrien turned as well and let out a yelp of surprise. The boy’s teeth flashed in a grin, unnaturally white and sharp, and he said something Marinette couldn’t hear. Adrien’s mouth opened, but his reply didn’t reach her either.

_Something is wrong about this,_ she thought, and the tales she’d heard felt suddenly more real. She began to struggle against the undergrowth again. Sure enough, she could feel the roots move to trip her, thorns catching on her clothes and skin. She screamed.

“Adrien! _Please!_ ”

Adrien turned again and reached for her - or reached out to stop her - but the boy had hold of his other hand, and pulled, and somehow, Marinette knew he was going to take Adrien to a place where she couldn’t follow.

“Marinette!” Adrien called, and his voice was so close, he must be closer than he looked, if she could just get past this tree -

The boy melted into the shadows, pulling Adrien along, and Adrien turned back, seeming to struggle against the boy’s grip - surely he couldn’t be that strong, such a small, slight child, surely Adrien would have the strength to pull away from him and reach her…

“Marinette!” he cried, turning back to her, and the fear on his face chilled her blood. “ _Go back!_ ”

And then he was gone, the echo of his last words fading into nothing.

“ _NO!_ ” Marinette threw herself after him, met no resistance whatsoever, and tumbled into a clearing that definitely hadn’t been there a moment before. She lay for a second, stunned, staring upwards, into a violet sky pricked with the first shy stars of the evening. Black leaves rustled at the edge of her vision, but the woods were otherwise silent. She blinked several times, then pushed herself upright only to find herself sitting on the edge of what was looked like a fairy ring from one of Rose’s old story books.

“Alright,” Marinette said, more to herself than to anyone who might hear - for she was certain that Adrien no longer could, never mind the strange boy who had taken him away. She glanced down at the circle of mushrooms. They gleamed silver in the starlight, looking slightly ethereal - except for the ones she had landed on. Marinette stood gingerly, brushing bits of mushroom off the back of her skirt. “Alright,” she repeated. “Adrien has vanished into thin air, or been kidnapped by a - boy, who I’ve never met, and now I’m stuck in the middle of the woods at night, completely lost..”

Tears sprang to her eyes. She wiped them away on her sleeve, grinding her teeth in frustration.

“Stupid, stupid, _stupid -_ ”

“That’s not very nice, now, is it?”

The voice was very high-pitched, and Marinette looked up in confusion to find herself face to face with what could only be described as -

“A BUG! MOUSE! BUG-MOUSE!”

Marinette scrambled backwards and tripped over a tree root, landing hard on her backside. The creature flew after her, just out of reach of the trembling finger she pointed at it.

“That’s not nice at _all_ ,” it remarked sadly. The creature looked the way a ladybird might look in a watercolour illustration for a children’s story. Its wings shimmered in the dim purple light of the clearing, impossibly huge eyes regarding her with concern.

“What - who -” Marinette swallowed hard. “Wh-who are you?” she finally managed in a trembling voice.

“Tikki of the Seelie Court,” the thing said, with a graceful bow in mid-air. “I’m a faerie, of course. I’m not sure what you expected, wandering about in these woods.”

Marinette blinked dumbly for several seconds.

“I, er.” She took a deep breath as her brain kicked itself into gear again. So the stories had been true. Right. “Please,” she said, remembering what was important. “Where’s Adrien?”

“The golden-haired boy?” Marinette nodded. “Oh, he’ll be in the Glimmerlands by now. Gone from here,” Tikki said, with a sweeping gesture that encompassed the clearing. “I’m afraid you’ll have to go back home without him.”

Marinette’s eyes widened in panic. “Can’t you take me to him?” she pleaded.

Tikki’s huge eyes looked genuinely sorrowful as she shook her head. “The boy who was with him was an Unseelie fairy. My kind are not allowed in their court.” She shuddered, as though remembering something fearful, and Marinette’s heart dropped to her stomach.

“Please!” she begged. “I’m sure he didn’t want to go! He just followed the cat - he didn’t meant to -”

Tikki shook her head again, regretfully. “He had to have been willing, else he couldn’t have gone,” she said. “Of course, he might have been  _made_ willing. Unseelie are wily. You mustn’t try to follow him,” she added, placing tiny, nubby paws on Marinette’s clasped hands. “It’s far too dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Marinette’s voice cracked. “What’s going to happen to Adrien?”

“Oh, I’m sure _he’ll_ be safe, for now at least. He has an escort. But you wouldn’t, not in the Unseelie court, with or without me.”

Tears blurred her vision, and this time she let them spill down her cheeks, too shocked to wipe them away. Adrien was gone. He’d vanished, been taken to an entirely different world, and Marinette had no idea whether she’d ever see him again. This was much worse than the deliveries being canceled.

_What am I going to tell his father?_ She thought suddenly, beginning to shake. A strangled sob tore its way up her throat and echoed around the clearing, startling a few bats into flight. She buried her face in her hands and wept.

Something tickled her hair, and she realized that Tikki was stroking her hair.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her high voice soft and close.

“What am I going to _do?_ ” Marinette sobbed.

“Well, you could start by going back home,” Tikki suggested. “I’ll lead you there, if you like.”

Belatedly, it occurred to Marinette that perhaps she shouldn’t trust the sweet-faced ladybird. She looked up and squinted at her.

“How do I know I can trust you?” she asked.

“You don’t,” Tikki conceded with a smile. “I could tell you that fae can’t lie, at least not without terrible consequence, but simply saying it wouldn’t prove anything, would it?”

Marinette shook her head.

“Think of it this way,” Tikki said. “Do you know how to get home by yourself?”

Marinette shook her head again.

“Then you don’t really have much choice, do you?” The faerie concluded sympathetically.

Marinette shook her head a third time, and sighed. “I suppose not,” she muttered, as she slowly began to pull herself to her feet. Pain flared in her hands and face from where she’d cut herself on thorns and branches, and she winced.

“Oh, here,” said Tikki, and she flew around Marinette in three tight circles, leaving a trail of sparkling pink dust in her wake. As the dust settled over Marinette’s skin, she felt the pain fade.

“How..?”

“It’s only glamour,” Tikki said. “It’ll last until morning, but you’ll still have to treat those cuts properly.”

Marinette clenched and unclenched her now painless hands. Blood leaked from one of the scratches, and she licked it. It was odd to taste her own blood without feeling pain.

“Thank you,” she said.

“That’s alright,” said Tikki. “Are you ready to go now?”

Marinette glanced up at the starlit sky, now a deep blue, and nodded. Her parents would be wondering where she was. She turned back to Tikki, who seemed to glow in the dark like a firefly.

“Watch your step, then,” the fairy said. “If you lose sight of me, just shout. I won’t be far.”

They set off down the hunter’s trail, which had reappeared somehow, leaving the clearing, and its broken fairy ring, behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: the whole putting a live cricket in your mouth to see how long you could keep it there while it jumped about is a thing one of my friends told me they did as a child, because "we had nothing else to do during the summer". 
> 
> Obligatory disclaimer: I do NOT recommend putting a live cricket in your mouth, and will not be held responsible for the consequences of doing so. I imagine it'd be an very unpleasant experience for both you and the cricket.


	3. Time Travel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A flashback, followed by a glimpse into the minds of our antagonists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so I edited this a few hours after posting it because I came across a post explaining that the word "gypsy" is a slur, did some research, and decided it was more important to avoid potentially triggering my readers than to make Gabriel even less likeable than he already is. I've replaced it with "travellers".

_Darkness, or rather, gloom. Grey light through wooden shutters. Tears tighten the skin of his cheeks. His left hand hurts, a stinging line of fire across his palm. He cradles it with his other hand._

_The boy in the mirror smirks._

“ _Told you.”_

_He doesn’t reply._

“ _I know someone who can make that better, if you like,” the mirror boy says, lifting his right hand. There’s a painful-looking welt there, too. “If you come over here, the pain could be gone in an instant.”_

_He is silent, and the mirror boy waits. Before, he would have turned away, or shook his head. But it hurts, it hurts, and he’s tired. The mirror boy says it’s just for one night. He says his family all use their left hand, and will love him better for it. He even has a brother._

_He’s always wanted a brother, but Placide died before he was born._

_He nods._

_The mirror boy grins gleefully, and he can’t help but smile back. As one, the boy and his reflection raise their uninjured hands and touch the mirror. Their stubby fingers splay across the glass… and then through it, intertwining, and then-_

_A loud creak from outside shakes the floorboards, and the boy jumps back._

“ _It’s just the windmill,” says the boy in the mirror. The other boy, the one in the real world, glances towards the window and back. His cheeks are still tight with tears, and his left hand still hurts. He glances down, clenching it experimentally._

“ _Did it work?”_

_He nods, slowly. The boy in the mirror is frowning at his right hand._

“ _But I thought…”_

_He shrugs, and his reflection copies him._

“ _Flixx,” he says, and the boy in the mirror lets out a surprised laugh._

“ _Félix,” the mirror boy replies. Their eyes meet again, for the last time, and the boy in the real world nods._

“ _Félix.”_

—

Gabriel Agreste was nursing a hangover. His latest work, in which a fairy boy with Adrien’s face played the flute for a ring of entranced children, stood, unfinished and gathering dust, against the wall in one corner of his atelier. The garish monstrosity sitting on the easel leered at him through the canvas. Bubbler, it was called. The name, along with the character, had come to him fully formed in a dream, the night Adrien had run away. It wasn’t the first, but these monsters were not what clients wanted when they commissioned Gabriel Agreste. Who would want such vulgar paintings? Better to burn them.

He could not bring himself to burn them. Some sick part of him was proud of his grotesque creations, happy to once again be painting something original - not a commission, not a piece made to be sold to the highest bidder, but something for himself.

 _I’m the only idiot who’d want them,_ he thought bitterly.

It occurred to him that Adrien should have returned by now, tail between his legs, thoroughly chastised by the realities of life outside the Agreste mansion. It had been two days, and the forest surrounding most of Borbois wasn’t big enough to hide from the village-wide search party that had been sent after him. Three days, really, if the baker’s daughter was to be believed. Gabriel had noticed her shyness, but she’d seemed relatively sound of mind the few times he’d met her. Enchanted by his son, like any girl with taste, and close to hysterical after witnessing his disappearance; but from what the villagers said, it wasn’t like her to make up stories or fall victim to hysteria. Gabriel knew quite a bit about what feminine madness looked like, and Marinette Dupain did not look mad.

He had questioned her himself, of course. She’d been tearfully adamant that Adrien had not simply run off into the woods, but been taken. There had been a boy, younger than him, but apparently strong enough to drag him away even after Adrien had heard her calling his name. That part might be easily explained. Adrien wasn’t a strong boy, physically: Gabriel needed to keep him soft and child-like if he was to serve as his model. In the woods, in the dark, who knew how many other people might have been hiding there? Gabriel would have been more worried, and less enraged, had Marinette not also been quite sure that Adrien had known the boy. From where, Gabriel had no idea, but somehow Adrien had established contact with people outside of Borbois to organize his escape. That, or they’d somehow convinced him to leave with them. Who were these people? Travellers? Thieves? Parisian radicals? Kidnappers, surely, would have made their demands known by now. Besides, Gabriel reflected sourly, if they’d wanted someone to kidnap, Chloe Bourgeois would have been a much better target. No, Adrien had gotten himself caught up in some scheme, some spiritual cult perhaps…

His head spun. The rage which had fueled his artistic madness last night had burned itself out, leaving nothing but fog and pain in its wake. Gabriel wasn’t much of a drinker, aside from the odd glass of bourbon to celebrate a happy client or a successful exhibit - a habit Emilie had taught him. The decline in his career could be precisely matched to her decline in health, and Gabriel was growing more and more desperate. Perhaps if he’d been more honest with Adrien, told him about the asylum… but no, the boy was hopelessly naïve. Gabriel had to recognize that this was partly his own fault. Emilie had always been ridiculously protective of him, but Gabriel had not discouraged her. And when Emilie had been confined to her bed, instead of granting his son more freedom, Gabriel had tightened his grip on him even further, afraid of what he might tell the villagers. Perhaps, instead, he ought to have sent him to boarding school, to toughen him up in the company of peers of the same class…

Gabriel rubbed his throbbing temples and groaned. How would he have paid for boarding school in the first place? They were practically ruined already. Even if Adrien came back, everyone in Borbois knew he had left of his own accord. His engagement to the mayor’s daughter was almost certainly off, André was simply waiting for the most tactful time to say it. Gabriel wondered if any of his contacts in Paris knew of a young girl who might want his simpleton of a son.

A scream sliced through his thoughts like a dagger through his brain. Gabriel jumped, but only slightly. The sound was a familiar one in this house, and would soon be silenced.

Should be silenced, rather. When a few minutes had passed and the screaming only grew louder, Gabriel rose from his chair in resignation. Nathalie was competent, but sometimes she needed help. And Gabriel could no longer afford to pay for more staff.

He found them near the stairs, Emilie throwing herself at them as Nathalie held her back, grunting with effort. Emilie’s wails echoed through the dark halls. The house was gloomy, even during the day.

“Emilie,” Gabriel said her name like a prayer for peace. “My love, what has put you in this state? Why are you giving poor Nathalie such a hard time?” He positioned himself between her and the stairs, hoping she wouldn’t throw them all to their deaths, and placed his hands on either side of her face. Emilie tried to bite him.

“You drove him away!” she hissed at her husband. Gabriel sighed.

“Adrien ran away himself,” he said, “but you needn’t fret. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. He’ll miss you.”

“Nooo!” Emilie sobbed, yanking herself forward against Nathalie’s arms. Gabriel’s hands moved to her shoulders and he pushed her back firmly. “He’s gone back. He’s gone back! He’ll forget about me again! He’s gone back, he’s gone back, he’s gone - _Gabriel_ ,” her eyes snapped open, brimming with tears, suddenly looking more focused than he’d seen them in years. “Gabriel, my love, you must find the gate and bring him home. Do it quick, before he… before he forgets me…” Emilie’s face crumpled with grief and she collapsed against Gabriel’s chest, beating at it with weak fists. “I don’t want to die here,” she whispered.

“I’ll find him,” Gabriel said, stroking her hair, which was loose and long, though it had gotten thinner lately. “He’ll be home before you know it.”

“I always told him not to go back into the forest,” Emilie sobbed. “I told him and _told_ him…”

“Children are rebellious, my love,” Gabriel said gently, steering them towards Emilie’s rooms. Nathalie had let go and was leading the way, glancing over her shoulder in case he needed help.

“He’s not a child any more,” she whimpered, staring into his shirt as though it had betrayed her, forcing him to walk sideways.

“You’re right,” Gabriel muttered, the embers of last night’s rage clenching his jaw. “He isn’t.”

—

Later, when Emilie had been given enough laudanum to knock out a small horse, Gabriel retired to his own room for once. Usually these days he spent the night in his atelier, but the sight of his latest creation was not conducive to restful sleep.

Nathalie supplied him with a herbal concoction for his headache, and left to inspect the rest of the house. She had been hired as a lady’s maid ten years ago, but as the family’s wealth had dwindled, she’d been obliged to take on other roles. Now the only servants left were Gorri, herself, and the cook. Nathalie did her best to keep up with the housework, but it really wasn’t enough. Emilie and Adrien often had coughing fits, no doubt due to the layer of dust and cobwebs that coated most of the house. Nathalie herself sometimes took ill, and though she knew she ought to demand more help from her employer, she couldn’t bring herself to cause him more stress. He was always very understanding when she got sick, after all, and so grateful for her help.

Nathalie took the rare opportunity to dust in Gabriel’s atelier. His latest work, barely dry, intrigued her. It was bright and colourful, almost too loud, but she found she liked it anyway. Even better than his usual fairytale portraits of Adrien and Emilie. She dusted off the one standing in the corner. Adrien’s face in it was anxious, even as he played and danced, and of the children who watched him, the two whose faces were done seemed to leer at him menacingly. It wasn’t Gabriel’s best work by any means.

She was removing books from the shelves in order to clean them when she stopped. Behind the books something glowed. She peered into the shadows of the shelf and gasped: inside a tiny cage was a purple butterfly, its wings laced with black lines that seemed to shift with the fluttering of its wings. Nathalie had never seen such a thing before. Gabriel had never struck as the type to collect insects, dead or alive, but even she could see that this one was special. Perhaps it was a gift, rare and precious enough to need hiding. Perhaps it was something even more important, some ingredient for his paints, perhaps.

Either way, she wouldn’t touch it, nor would she tell anyone. Nathalie was determined to show Gabriel that she could be trusted. Heart tapping fast against her ribcage, she carefully wiped the area around the cage, leaving a thin border of dust around it. Then she dusted the books with just as much care before putting them back in order. When she left the atelier, it looked just as it had when she’d entered it, only much cleaner.


	4. Day 4: Bender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marinette asks Tikki and Alix for help in the search for Adrien.

Marinette kneaded tomorrow’s bread dough as though it had wronged her. Her father had left the baking to Marinette and her mother, in order to join the party still searching for Adrien. It had been four days. Marinette tried not to think of what might have happened to him, what might  _still_ be happening to him, but it was difficult when Adrien’s disappearance was all anyone wanted to talk to her about.

Being interrogated by Gabriel Agreste and Roger Raincomprix, the closest thing their village had to a police officer, had been exhausting. Marinette had done her best to be as honest as possible - even about the parts that might make her sound completely mad - but she had seen the skepticism in their faces. She hadn’t expected the same treatment from her friends and family, however.

“Are you certain there was nobody there apart from this other boy?” her father had asked her when he came home just last night. He looked tired and grim.

“Not that I saw,” Marinette repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. “It was dark, Papa. No, I can’t be certain.”

Tom had heard the wobble in her voice and let her be, but Nino had come around twice that morning to ask her questions about what the boy had been wearing and what time it was, exactly. The second time, Alya had been with him.

“Leave her be,” she’d scolded her sweetheart. “Can’t you see you’re upsetting her?”

“No, Alya, it’s fine,” Marinette reassured her, feeling anything but fine. “If any of it helps to find Adrien, then I’ll be happy to answer a thousand questions.”

Nino had smiled gratefully at her, but he’d ducked out of the bakery after that. André Bourgeois had graciously “lent” all of his male workers to the search for Gabriel’s son, but Marinette knew they wouldn’t keep searching forever. They had to make the most of the time they had.

Maxence, another old classmate who had returned from his apprenticeship with a doctor for the summer, had come by to see how she was doing. Upon hearing her tale, he suggested the coffee might have made her hallucinate. Marinette shrugged and said nothing. Despite only having taken a tiny sip several hours before the incident, she might have been inclined to agree - if Tikki hadn’t hung around her in the days that followed.

The diminutive ladybird landed on the baking table, close to where she was kneading, but not too close. In the past few days, she had learned that surprising Marinette was a bad idea: Marinette’s first instinct upon seeing a bug was to scream; her second was to squash it, using whatever came to hand. Marinette, though grateful for the faerie’s kindness, couldn’t help but wonder why she’d chosen to stay.

“I’m looking for someone,” Tikki had replied when asked. “A friend of mine has gone missing too.”

She’d looked so sad that Marinette had believed her on the spot.

“What does your friend look like?” she’d asked, more out of politeness than any hope of having seen them. Surely she’d remember such an encounter.

“It depends on where he is and what form he’s taking, but here he’d probably look like a purple butterfly.”

Marinette confirmed that she had seen no purple butterflies.

“You’ll over-knead it like that,” Tikki said now, interrupting her thoughts. Marinette blinked down at the dough in her hands. Indeed, she had come dangerously close to over-kneading the it.

“Are you sure you’re not a brownie?” she asked as she flattened the dough a little and cut it into rolls.

“Certainly not,” Tikki said with a sniff. “As I said before, my specialty is creation and healing. Or at least, the illusion of it.”

“The roses you grew outside the back door smell very real,” Marinette remarked.

“They are real,” Tikki said. “I glamoured them into thinking they got more sunlight than they do in that gloomy alley.”

Marinette frowned quizzically at the faerie. “Won’t they… I don’t know, figure it out?”

“Eventually,” Tikki conceded with a sigh. “I can only do real magic in the Glimmerlands, and even then, it’s a lot harder.”

_The Glimmerlands,_ thought Marinette.  _Where Adrien is._

“Why is it called the ‘Glimmerlands’?” she asked, setting the bread rolls onto a baking sheet.

“Because the sun barely glimmers on the horizon,” Tikki replied. “In the Seelie Court, at least. In the Unseelie lands it’s worse. They hardly have any light at all. In the farthest reaches, all they have is moonlight.”

“All the time? It never changes?” Marinette stopped her work to listen.

“Never,” Tikki said. “In the Seelie Court, we have a cycle where half of us sleep while the other half is awake, and then we swap. In the Unseelie Court however…” she shuddered. “That’s one reason it’s dangerous there. It’s darker, so you can see less, and there are very few rules, no organization. You never know what to expect.”

Marinette thought of Adrien, trapped in a moonlit faerie hell.

“What…” she began, before stopping herself. Asking what sorts of faeries lived in the Unseelie Court would not help her. After all, _she_ was not allowed to search for him, by simple virtue of being a girl.

_And yet,_ she thought, _if anyone has a chance of finding him, it’s me._

She’d have an even better chance if she could only convince Tikki to help her.

“Tikki,” she said, and the faerie looked up from where she was poking tiny paw prints into the bread rolls. “How about we make a deal?”

Tikki cocked her head, waiting.

“If you take me to - to the Glimmerlands,” Marinette said slowly, “I promise to help you find your friend when we get back.”

Tikki pouted consideringly. Marinette tried not to fidget under her gaze.

“How do I know you’ll keep your promise?” Tikki asked.

Marinette blinked, but swallowed her indignant retort. Of course Tikki had no reason to trust her, particularly. Just because Tikki had proven herself trustworthy by helping Marinette didn’t mean Marinette had proven herself to Tikki.

“You can’t,” she replied, remembering what Tikki had told her when they’d first met in the woods. “But think of it this way. Have you made any progress in your search since you arrived?”

Tikki’s antennae drooped, and she shook her head glumly. Marinette’s heart squeezed, and her hand lifted seemingly on its own, but she stopped short of petting the faerie’s adorable head. Fae folk could be proud, according to the stories. She didn’t want to insult this one.

“It’s your choice,” Marinette said, just managing to keep the pleading note out of her voice. “I’ll give you until tomorrow evening to answer me. After that I’m going back to the woods, with or without you.”

“How are you going to get there? Won’t the men in the search party stop you?”

Marinette’s smile felt more like a grimace. “I have a plan for that.”

—

“I knew this day would come,” Alix said, looking like the cat who got the cream.

“You knew I’d one day ask you for a pair of breeches and a boy’s shirt?” Marinette asked dubiously, tucking the latter into the former.

“Of course,” said Alix. “What woman doesn’t one day dream of enjoying the same freedoms as a man?”

“I wish I could enjoy those freedoms while wearing skirts,” Marinette grumbled.

Alix shrugged. “Breeches are more comfortable, not to mention practical. Try on the boots.”

“I’m sure my walking boots would suffice,” Marinette protested, but Alix shook her head.

“Your father is out there. His eyes will be trained on the ground, looking for tracks, and he knows what your boots look like. Better he doesn’t see them.”

She couldn’t argue with that, so she shoved her feet into the boots, and was surprised at how well they fit.

“They used to be Nathaniel’s,” Alix said. “He gave them to me when he grew out of them.”

“That was kind of him,” Marinette said distractedly.

“You’ll be going with him tonight,” Alix said, and that got Marinette’s attention.

“Won’t you be coming?” she asked.

Alix shook her head. “My father’s being a pain,” she sighed. “Going on about how I’m still a girl even if I don’t act like one, and I ought to be more careful. My brother is waiting outside to escort me home.”

Any other day, Marinette might have laughed at the frustration on Alix’s face. Now, though, she could only sympathize.

“Where should I meet Nathaniel?” she asked.

“He’ll wait for you by the well in the town square. That’s where the search usually starts. Try to get there before six o’clock. They start heading home after sunset.”

“That doesn’t leave much time,” Marinette muttered, already thinking of excuses to tell her mother. It pained her to lie, but she couldn’t deny the way her heartbeat skipped at the idea of finally _doing_ something.

“Thank you, for this,” she said, throwing her arms around her startled friend. Alix patted her back gingerly until Marinette let go.

“That’s alright,” she replied with a grin. “I’m just happy I got to see the day Marinette Dupain willingly put on breeches.”

—

Marinette met up with Nathaniel feeling terrified and eager and a somewhat disappointed. Tikki had flown off that morning and not returned. Marinette was far from certain she’d find the way to the Glimmerlands without her, but if she at least found the clearing with the broken ring of mushrooms, perhaps she might meet another fae person, and convince it to guide her there in exchange for… something. She’d burn that bridge when she came to it.

_Cross_ , she corrected herself, although the fear in her heart told her that “burn” might indeed be more fitting.

Nathaniel’s boots followed behind her, a steady reminder that if she did vanish into the wilderness, there would be at least one witness to take the story back to her parents. Perhaps they’d take a second person - and a boy, to boot - more seriously. Perhaps, if they sent more people to that clearing…

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

Nath’s murmur sounded too loud in the quiet forest. Marinette knew that ahead of them, scattered wide, were other pairs from the search party, but aside from the odd cracking branch, a thick coat of moss and leaves seemed to muffle their footsteps.

“No,” she admitted. “I came in this way, but I don’t remember when I left the trail, nor how I got back out.” Her stomach squirmed uneasily. If they strayed too far from the others, would anyone hear them call for help?

Nathaniel was silent, and she paused to glance over her shoulder at him. He was focused on placing his feet, and bumped into her.

“Sorry,” they both said, before Marinette added: “I shouldn’t have asked you to do this with me. You can go back if you like.”

Nathaniel blinked, then frowned at her. “Without you? Don’t be silly. I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Marinette felt her cheeks warm at the implication, and hoped the fading light would disguise it. She turned back and plowed on through the undergrowth.

“If… something happens,” she said a few paces later, “Please tell my parents I knew what I was doing. And I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

It took her a moment to realize that he’d stopped. He was probably wondering what she meant by that. Marinette turned once more, only to find herself alone.

“Nath?” she said, then louder: “Nathaniel!”

 _So much for following me anywhere,_ she thought.

It occurred to her then that she couldn’t hear the other villagers, either. She’d shouted Nathaniel’s name, and nobody had answered, asking what had happened to him. The forest was quiet, cloaked in rustling blue shadows.

Marinette’s heart began to pound against her ribcage, like a bird trying to escape. Nathaniel had been carrying the lamp, not to be lit until it was quite dark. Marinette had been entrusted with the matches. She reached into the pocket of her breeches and took one out with trembling fingers.

“Don’t,” said a high voice.

Marinette jumped, before a sense of familiarity comforted her nerves a little.

“Tikki?” she whispered.

There came a sigh, as though Marinette had tried the faerie’s patience.

“When you said you’d be leaving with or without me, I never thought you’d be dragging half the village along with you,” Tikki said, her voice sharp with annoyance. “Imagine if they found us! Things are tense enough already, adding humans into the mix would be chaos!”

“Then why did they take Adrien?” Marinette snapped, glancing around to see where she was. Her voice seemed to be coming from several directions at once.

Tikki sighed again, sounding more tired than annoyed this time. “I’m not sure,” she said. “It might be a good idea to find out. Perhaps I'll find some clue as to where Nooroo went. That’s why I’m here,” she added. “To take you up on your offer.”

Marinette’s heart leapt for her throat, from excitement or terror, or both.

“Really? Oh thank you Tikki!” she gasped, then frowned. “Where are you?”

“Here.”

The voice came from right in front of her, and Marinette spun to see a girl a few years younger than she was, with tanned skin that appeared mottled in the forest shadows, night-blue eyes, and the reddest hair she’d ever seen - redder, even, than Nathaniel’s.

Marinette blinked.

“T-Tikki?”

“We’re close, now, so it’s best if I take on my real form,” Tikki explained, catching Marinette’s hand in hers. “Come, I’ll guide you there and keep you safe - as much as I can, at least.”

Marinette remembered what Tikki had said about fae being unable to lie without great consequence, and hoped it was true.

“Will you take me to Adrien? And bring us home?” she asked carefully.

“I’ll do my best,” the smaller girl replied, and Marinette bit her lip in anticipation.

They hadn’t gone more than ten steps before the clearing hove into view, as abruptly as it had the last time. The broken mushrooms had already been replaced with new ones, which seemed to gleam silver, like the ghosts of the ones she’d squashed. Marinette shivered. The sky was purple once again, and moonless.

“Can Nathaniel see me?” she asked suddenly, remembering Adrien’s last few seconds in the real world.

“Do you want him to?” Tikki inquired, glancing up at her. Marinette took a deep breath, remembering the skepticism on the faces of the other villagers. She could inflict that on Nathaniel… or she could let him think she’d wandered off. But then, wouldn’t they blame him for her disappearance? Nathaniel had knowingly helped her trick her parents, after all. Better he should tell them she'd gone willingly.

“Let him see me and hear me,” she decided. “But don’t let him come with us.”

“Of course not,” Tikki shuddered at the thought. “One human to glamour, as well as myself, will be enough of a challenge.”

“ _Marinette!_ ” Nathaniel’s voice tore through the forest like a saw, and Marinette spun to see him just behind her, his foot caught in the root of a tree, his chest heaving with panic. Her heart twisted painfully.

“Nath,” she said, reaching for him, but Tikki stopped her, shaking her head.

“Marinette? You’re there…” The relief in his voice was heartbreaking. He saw Tikki and swallowed. “Who’s this?”

“She’s going to take me to Adrien,” Marinette said, trying to keep her voice steady. “Don’t follow. Just go back and tell everyone what you saw. Tell them I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“What?” The tears on Nathaniel’s face seemed to twinkle as his eyes grew wide with disbelief and horror. On a whim, Marinette took the matches from her pocket and threw them towards him. They landed at his feet.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and turned to Tikki before she could change her mind. “Let’s go.”

Tikki nodded, and the clearing began to glow with a strange blue light that had nothing to do with the night sky. Marinette heard her name being called again in that broken voice, and shut her eyes tight. Tears rolled down her cheeks and knotted her throat as Tikki’s hands held both of hers, and the light grew bright enough to blind her, even through her closed eyelids.

When it faded, the air felt different. Charged, like just before a thunderstorm. Tears blurred her vision as she opened her eyes, and she had to rub them several times to believe what she was seeing.

“Welcome to the Glimmerlands,” Tikki said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last of the chapters I'd managed to write in advance, so from now on I'm afraid they'll be late. I will continue to update as regularly as I can, but this story is one I've been waiting a long time to tell, and I want to do it right. I hope you continue to enjoy it anyway!


	5. Bedsharing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UGH this chapter took me FOREVERRR. It's over 3,300 words long, so be warned. I know I said I wasn't going to be as productive as during Adrinette April, but even I expected it to go quicker than this. Luckily the amazing, fantastic, marvellous, beautiful people on the APS discord writer's channel were there to encourage me. I love you guys. <3 <3

“…which is why you must never tell anyone here your true name, or your true nature, at least not until I - hey, are you listening to me?”

The cat-turned-fae, who called himself Plagg, grumbled something about humans and their pitiful attention spans, but Adrien was too busy staring at the surrounding landscape to notice. He was not well-traveled - his parents preferred to keep him in the village, and he’d only been to Paris three times in his life - but he  _was_ well-read, and he was quite sure that nowhere in the human world looked like this. 

They were no longer surrounded by trees. To what he assumed was the west, the sun lay just below the horizon, and the sky above ran the spectrum from citrine, spilling onto the hills, to indigo right above them. Stars blazed more than they twinkled, with a ribbon of them splitting the sky, so numerous it looked like the night had a layer of frost on it. But that wasn’t what held Adrien’s attention.

The first thing he noticed was that everything here seemed to glow, from the trees and plants to the grass he stood on. Beneath his feet, spreading out in all directions, a million turquoise blue lines waved in soft ripples. The second thing was that some of the stars were moving, and it took him a moment to realize that they were not stars, but tiny people, whose delicate wings were veined with silver light. They moved like shooting stars or planets until they reached their destination, at which point they shot down, out of sight, leaving nothing but streaks of afterglow in their wake. The third thing he noticed was that most of them seemed to be coming from, or going to, the largest tree Adrien had ever seen. Its shadow sat on the eastern horizon like a gap in the sky, the only plant he could see that did not emit light. Rather, it seemed to absorb it - the faeries it housed became completely invisible once they’d arrived home.

The strange grass reached past his knees, and he was about to reach down and touch it when Plagg smacked his hand away.

“Do you want to die?” the boy snapped.

“Wha - it’s just…” He glanced down. It wasn’t _just_ grass. Perhaps he’d better listen to Plagg.

“Don’t stare at the clouds, either,” Plagg said.

“Why not?” asked Adrien. He glanced up at the oddly symmetrical clouds that bordered the hills to the west, only for Plagg to smack him upside the head this time. “Ow!”

“They’ll mesmerize you until you can think of nothing else, and you’ll waste away. Probably eaten by the songrass.”

“Songrass?”

Plagg made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the plains they were standing on.

“Songrass. Because it sings and sends you to sleep.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad."

“You don’t wake up, idiot,” Plagg retorted. “The grass pulls you into the ground and you suffocate, die, and rot. Then it has your soul and your voice,” he added, “to tempt other foolish children to their doom.”

Adrien straightened abruptly, pulling his hands away from the grass.

“Don’t touch the grass,” he said, “and don’t stare at the clouds. Right.”

“Better you don’t touch or look too closely at anything,” Plagg said. “It’d take less time to list the things in this world that _don’t_ want to eat you.”

Adrien blinked at the gently rustling leaves on a nearby shrub. They were laced with dull red light, like capillaries, and he found himself wondering where the red tone came from. He shivered.

“You might want to come up with a different name, too,” Plagg said. “I’ve already glamoured your appearance so you look a bit more like us, but -”

“You’ve what?” Adrien interrupted.

“Glamoured your appearance,” Plagg repeated impatiently. “Made your ears pointier, given you an extra knuckle, that sort of thing. Most won’t know the difference, as long as you keep your mouth shut.”

Adrien looked down at his hands, and found they did look longer and thinner. He curled his fingers and stretched them, before reaching up to touch his ears.

“I don’t feel any different.”

“That’s because you’re not,” said Plagg. “I’m just making you _look_ different. Now, what should we call you? Adrin? Aiden? No, too close to the original. Darin?” He snorted. “That’d make a good Seelie joke, but no, we need something I won’t laugh at every time you introduce yourself. Hm…”

“Wasn’t I supposed to play a role? Your brother?” Adrien asked.

“Take his place, yes,” Plagg clarified. “No need for you to take his name, though. Let’s see, green eyes, fair hair… Fair-y, ha! Too obvious..."

Adrien’s mind wandered. He itched to see himself in a mirror. Of course, in the middle of the grassy plain, there were no mirrors. The closest thing to it was what appeared to be a large puddle, or small pond, that lay, still as glass, down a gentle slope.

“Sunny!” Plagg said delightedly. “It’s perfect! Cheerful _and_ prophetic, if you know what I- hey! What did I say about everything wanting to eat you here?!”

“I just want to see what I look like,” Adrien said, leaning over the pond as Plagg trotted down the slope after him.

Adrien leaned over the edge of the water, peered at his reflection, and held back a yelp: the person staring back at him looked like a stranger, and yet horribly familiar at the same time, as though he were seeing a twin he’d never met. He squinted, looking closer. He looked mostly the same, albeit thinner. His nose was a little more upturned than before, and his ears - he turned his head to see them - poked out from beneath hair that hung thick and messy and completely straight. His eyes were the most striking change: they glowed like sun-shot leaves in summer, and their pupils, though wide in the dark, were not quite round.

_I’ve seen this person before,_ he thought, before correcting himself:  _Of course I have, it’s just me with pointy ears and slit pupils._

The uneasy familiarity would not leave him, however.

“Sunny! Get away from there!” Plagg interrupted his thoughts by dragging him away from the pond. “You’re lucky it’s a new moon tonight, or the naiads would have gotten you for sure.”

“Sorry,” said Adrien, eyeing the glassy pool. Plagg's constant warnings were beginning to sound like his parents'.

“Listen, I know you’re here to have fun, but remember your promise to me, kitten. And remember, too, that we’re not in Seelie lands, where humans are coddled and kept as pets.”

“As _pets?"_

“Better than getting eaten,” Plagg pointed out. “Now, listen carefully if you don’t want to get yourself killed.”

Adrien listened with growing trepidation as Plagg explained the rules for their journey to the Unseelie Court. He wasn’t to wander off, touch anything with his bare hands unless Plagg touched it first, or even look at anything too closely, especially if it glowed. If he heard voices or saw anything that Plagg apparently couldn’t, he was to tell him immediately. If he felt suddenly sleepy or hungry too. He wasn’t to lie, at least not outright, and he wasn’t to tell anyone his real name.

“Why not?” Adrien asked. “I’m not fae. How could it affect me?”

"The longer you spend here, human or not, the more you will start to change. Stay here long enough, and you'll learn to use glamour yourself. Humans and fae have common ancestry, after all.”

Adrien opened his mouth to ask about that, but Plagg shot him a pointed glare and kept talking.

“You must never, _ever_ tell someone your true name, even if they look like a friend. _Especially_ if they look like a friend. There are people here who have the power to get into your head and take on the appearance of those closest to you. Understand?”

Adrien shivered and nodded.

“Good. Now, follow me and do as I say. It’s a long walk to the Unseelie Court.”

—

They had been walking for hours, and so far, three different things had attempted to eat Adrien. The first, as they were walking past the pool, had been a grey, rotting hand that grabbed his ankle. Adrien had screamed, Plagg had cursed and bitten the thing, and dragged him away from the water.

“Told you,” Plagg grumbled as Adrien stumbled upright.

“You said it was a new moon!”

“It is a new moon, or you’d be dead,” Plagg retorted. “Their grip isn’t usually that weak.”

He’d led Adrien east, towards the glittering, star-frosted night. Adrien followed, somewhat shaken, and more wary of his surroundings.

That had lasted about half an hour, when they’d passed what appeared to be an ordinary apple tree, its branches creaking with apples. Adrien’s stomach rumbled, and he reached up without thinking. Plagg heard the sound of an apple being plucked from the tree and spun to smack it out of his hand.

“I told you not to touch anything!” he snapped, pulling Adrien away from the tree. “Let me see your hand.”

“Sorry!” Adrien stammered as Plagg examined his hand. Plagg placed his own hand over Adrien’s and muttered something. Adrien yelped in pain and surprise - it felt like a thousand needles were being pulled out of his palm. Plagg upturned Adrien’s hand, and an odd, black dust fell out of it.

“Don’t make me do that too often,” Plagg said, before adding in a mutter, “I should have asked you to bring food.”

“What _was_ that?”

“Poison,” Plagg replied shortly.

Adrien stared at the apple tree that had tried to kill him. “It looks so much like one of ours,” he said. “It’s not even glowing.”

“Not _everything_ glows here,” said Plagg. “Just… well, most of it.”

The third thing had, predictably, been the songrass. As the novelty and nerves wore off and his body remembered that he was usually sleeping at this time, Adrien thought he could hear something soft, just at the edge of his hearing. At first he took it to be some bird of the night and tried to ignore it. This was a mistake. Adrien’s limbs began to feel heavy, and he began to slouch. The third him he yawned, Plagg turned, took one look at him and pinched his cheek hard.

“Ouch!” Adrien cried. “What was that for?”

“Your hands were touching the songrass!” Plagg said, exasperated. “Didn’t I say you should tell me if you started hearing it?”

“But I can’t-” Adrien stopped, and at the same time, so did the song. He _had_ been hearing it, a low, regular lullaby, so quiet he hadn’t noticed it. Adrien straightened and blinked. The odd heaviness in his limbs was trickling away like dry sand, leaving a tired but reassuring ache in its place. “Sorry,” Adrien grumbled, rubbing his cheek. “It crept up on me.”

Plagg rolled his eyes and started walking again, and Adrien followed. His eyes kept being drawn to the giant tree on the horizon to his left. No matter how far they walked, they never seemed to pass it.

“How long must we keep walking?” Adrien asked. “I _am_ getting tired, and it’s not just the songrass.”

Plagg looked surprised when he turned this time, as though he’d just remembered something important. “Ah, true, your kind need regular sleep. I’m sure I can find somewhere safe in those woods over-”

A scream rent the air, and both of them jumped. It had come from the woods in question, and Plagg immediately began running in the opposite direction, pulling Adrien along behind him.

“It sounds like someone needs help!” Adrien yelled as he tried to keep up with Plagg. The shorter boy was surprisingly fast.

“Not our problem!” Plagg yelled back.

Adrien glanced behind them and saw a short figure running towards them, pursued by what appeared to be -

“Is that a _tree?!_ ”

“Stop looking and run, you fool!”

“That tree is going to catch them!”

“I _said_ it’s not our - curse it, kit, what are you _doing!_ ”

Adrien was running back, terrified but determined. The tree was moving fast on many tentacle-like roots.

“Hey!” he shouted as loud as he could. Wide blue eyes stopped to stare as he ran past, but Adrien was focused on the monstrosity whose looming attention was suddenly, entirely on him. Too late, Adrien’s survival instinct kicked in: he froze.

The thing groaned, a long, screeching groan of wood tearing itself apart. It ran at him, over him - and stopped again. Soil rained down on his head, and Adrien looked up, between the roots, to see a huge, gaping maw full of sharp teeth.

Adrien whimpered. The maw widened, the roots forming a cage around him, and he knew he was about to die.

Something ran bodily into him, there was a resounding crash, and everything went black for a moment.

When Adrien opened his eyes, he was lying on the grass a few meters away from the tree, and someone was tugging on the back of his shirt, hissing, “Come on come on come  _on_ before it gets up again!”

Adrien scrambled to his feet. The figure he’d saved - and who had saved him - had blue eyes, blue hair, and skin so pale it seemed to shimmer in places; but other than that, she looked eerily like…

“Ma-?”

A hand clapped over his mouth from behind.

“Don’t mind this idiot friend of mine, he got dropped on his head as a child,” Plagg said with a nervous laugh. Yanking Adrien away from both the girl and the tree, he hissed, “New rule! Don’t mention anyone you used to know by name, or they can use it against you!”

“Wha- but she looked just like -”

“A changeling without their glamour on, is what they looked like,” Plagg cut in. “Do you want your friend to be kidnapped and dumped in the Glimmerlands so that _that_ can take her place?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Adrien glanced behind. The changeling, if that’s really what she was, was following hesitantly, casting nervous glances over her shoulder. The tree was still, for now.

“Let me deal with it,” Plagg whispered, and he turned back to speak with her. “Hey, so -”

Adrien saw Plagg’s face go from false congeniality to slit-pupilled terror as another screeching groan echoed across the plains. Adrien turned in time to see the tree lift itself from the ground again.

“Run!” the girl yelped, and they ran, leaving a trail of flattened songrass in their wake. The ground trembled under the thud of the tree roots, quicker than a heartbeat and gaining on them fast. The girl overtook them. Adrien just had time to think that her panicked expression _really_ made her look like Marinette, when Plagg yanked him to the left.

“Here!”

Plagg dove into what appeared to be a bank of solid ground, and Adrien stopped, blinking in bewilderment.

“P-Plagg?”

“Here!” Plagg hissed, and the grass lifted to reveal a hole in the side of the slope.

A scream pierced the air, and Adrien glanced behind him.

“ _Sunny!_ ” Plagg growled.

The changeling caught sight of him and veered in his direction. Adrien, ignoring Plagg’s curses, waited until she caught up with him, grabbed her around the shoulders and dove into the hole.

It was bigger than he’d expected, and they tumbled together to the hard earth. Adrien lay there for a moment, stunned.

“Ow,” the girl groaned, sitting up and rubbing her back. Even her voice sounded like Marinette’s.

“Shh!” Plagg’s eyes glared out of the darkness at them, before turning back towards the entrance. The ground around them trembled still, dust drifting down from the ceiling as the tree skittered over and around the place where they’d vanished. After a few moments they saw it wander a little further down the slope, before settling with a final, ground-trembling thud.

There was a collective sigh of relief before Plagg rounded on the two of them. Adrien prepared himself for yet another lecture.

“Welp, might as well sleep here,” Plagg said with a grin.

Adrien blinked. “What?” he blurted, at the same time as the girl said “ _Here?_ ”

Plagg’s eyes widened towards the newcomer in the most innocent expression Adrien had seen on him yet.

“You’re welcome to sleep with us, if you like,” he said, and Adrien frowned in confusion. Hadn't Plagg had wanted to lose the girl just moments before?

Her eyes darted from Plagg to Adrien to the tree that had tried to devour them. “I… suppose,” she said. “If that’s alright.”

It took them very little time to settle down. The ground was hard packed but even, and wide enough for all three of them to lie on if they huddled together. Adrien wanted to take advantage of the proximity to wait until Plagg was asleep and try to talk to the changeling-who-might-be-Marinette, but Plagg was having none of it, and put himself firmly in between the two. Adrien could have been imagining it in the dark, but the girl looked frustrated as well.

“What should we call you, by the way?” Plagg asked congenially once they were settled.

“Um, Blue,” she said. It sounded rehearsed to Adrien, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking. He closed his eyes, the better to hear her.

“Blue,” Plagg repeated. “Call me Plagg, and him Sunny.”

“Sunny?” The smile in Blue’s voice was so familiar, Adrien’s heart stumbled. An image of Marinette, lifting a cup of coffee to lips curled in a fond smirk, filled the darkness behind his eyelids. That had been just that morning, he realized. It felt like days ago.

“That’s a little on-the-nose, isn’t it?” she was asking now.

“It’s more to do with his hair than his nose, but each to their own.”

Silence fell, and the adrenaline slowly seeped out of Adrien’s limbs. Bumps, cuts and bruises made themselves known one by one as he relaxed. He wanted to think of something to say, some question he could ask that would allow him to know if Blue was Marinette, but he couldn’t think of one that wouldn’t give him away as human if she wasn’t.

It occurred to Adrien that despite seeing her almost every day for the past few years, he didn’t know Marinette all that well. He had no idea what her favourite colour was, or which foods she favoured. He didn’t know which flowers she liked, or even if she liked flowers. Their exchanges had always taken place in the kitchen, a surreptitious sort of friendship, born of rebellion, and probably a good deal of pity on her part.

Exhaustion fogged his mind. Part of him resisted sleep out of recently-acquired habit, but this sleepiness felt different to the lulling of songrass. Just as he was drifting off, Adrien felt something touch his foot. Startled awake, he jerked it back. Marinette’s voice -  _Blue’s_ voice - slipped through the dark, barely a whisper.

“Sorry.”

Adrien bit his lip. Plagg’s breathing was even, but he knew better than to trust the fae boy. He shifted his foot back to where it had been, silently grateful for the growth spurt he’d gone through that spring. Carefully avoiding Plagg's feet, he felt around until he found hers again. He pressed his boot against the bottom of it. She, too, was wearing boots, unlike Plagg, whose feet were bare. Didn’t some fae wear boots? Changelings would probably wear boots, wouldn't they? She couldn't do anything to him through two layers of socks and boots, could she?

He felt her press back in reply and fall still, their feet still touching. Adrien fell asleep a few minutes later, hoping against hope that Plagg was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special shout-out to ominousunflower, who lent me their nickname for Adrien! Go check out their work here or on tumblr. If you're wondering why I didn't just name them "Chat Noir" and "Ladybug", well... you'll see. :3


	6. Enemies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom Dupain falls ill, Adrien has a strange dream, and we have our first akuma!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyy I hope you enjoy this chapter! It'll probably take even longer for me to get the next one out unfortunately, perhaps as long as two weeks, but I promise I'm not giving up on it!

Sabine Dupain counted change into Mademoiselle Bustier’s palm, an absent smile plastered across her face. She’d been working all morning, because she had to, but her mind was elsewhere. Marinette had been missing for two days, and she and Tom were worried sick. Literally, in Tom’s case.

“Madame Dupain, you’ve given me too much,” Mademoiselle Bustier pointed out gently.

“Oh! Silly me,” Sabine muttered, taking the change back and recounting it. She gave the money back to Mademoiselle Bustier, who blinked at it.

“That’s even more,” she said. Her smile was sympathetic.

“Oh, keep it,” Sabine said, waving her off and trying not to sound irritable. No doubt Mademoiselle Bustier was also worried for Marinette. She’d been her school teacher, after all.

“If you’re sure,” said Mademoiselle Bustier.

Alya slipped into the bakery and stood off to one side. If Sabine served the remaining customers a little quicker than usual, none of them remarked upon it. Once the shop was empty, she beckoned, and her daughter’s best friend ran into her arms.

“Any news?”

“None,” Alya whispered, her voice wobbling. A now-familiar lump grew in Sabine’s throat. She swallowed against the tears, and heard Alya do the same.

“How is Monsieur Dupain?” Alya asked.

Sabine pursed her lips and glanced towards the stairs.

“I was about to go and check on him,” she said. “Turn the sign for me, dear.”

“I can mind the bakery if you want,” Alya volunteered, but Sabine shook her head.

“I want you to see him. Tell me if it looks like what Nino had.”

Alya turned the open sign to closed on the glass door and followed Sabine up a flight of narrow stairs. Their steps creaked loudly in the gloom.

Tom was lying in bed, shivering and sweating with fever. He’d thrown off the blankets, and Sabine pulled them back, all the way up to his chin. She fussed over his pillows for a few minutes before applying a wet rag to his forehead. He frowned and shook his head, grumbling.

“Is he raving?” Alya’s voice was quiet.

“He was earlier,” Sabine replied. “Talking about Marinette.”

“That’s no surprise. When it happened to Nino, all he would talk about was Adrien. And his father,” Alya added. “Something about keeping him locked up.”

“So you think it’s the same thing?”

Alya bit her lip under Sabine’s gaze. There was desperation there, and fear. Sabine Dupain, née Cheng, had no other family in Borbois, or even in France. Alya wondered what she would do if she lost Marinette  _and_ Tom.

“I can’t be certain,” she said, “but the way it came on all sudden, the sleep, the delirium… it does look similar.”

“How long did it last for Nino?”

“A day,” Alya said. “A day and a half, if you count his recovery. He was starving when he woke up. Ate three bowls of stew and a whole baguette, and then he slept until supper, and ate the same thing again.”

Sabine nodded several times, looking pensive. “Hungry,” she echoed. “I see.” She stood, fussed again with Tom’s pillows and blankets, closed the window a fraction, and led Alya out of the room and into the kitchen.

“Have you eaten?” Sabine asked her, rummaging in the pantry. She handed Alya a round loaf and some cheese before turning back to rummage some more.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to take over in the bakery?” Alya asked, watching Sabine take out several carrots and eye them critically.

Sabine turned to her, one hand on her hip, and let out a breath. “Actually, yes, please do. I’ll make you something to eat. I’ll make enough for all of us.”

Alya nodded and thanked her, and disappeared downstairs. The bread and cheese sat on the table, and for a second Sabine was gripped with a cold terror at the idea of it all going to waste.

Then she shook her head to clear it, and rolled up her sleeves. Tom was stronger than that. She had to have faith in him. He would recover, and he would find Marinette, and their family would be whole again.

She set to work making ginger soup.

—

_It was dawn, and the woods were wide and bright. Sunlight slanted cross-wise through the trees, yellow beams that Adrien ran through on bare feet before diving into the shadows again. He giggled._

“ _Come get me!” he called, looking back along the path._

_Through a collage of deep green and blinding gold, a pair of eyes gleamed, slit pupils wide open._

“ _I can’t go any farther,” Plagg’s voice said. The quiet way he said it felt like cold gruel in Adrien’s stomach._

“ _Why not?”_

_The eyes blinked slowly, and when they opened again, they seemed to shine._

“ _I must return to my family,” Plagg said, even quieter. “And you must return to yours.”_

“ _No!” Adrien cried, and he tried to run back, but a root tripped him. Tears stung his eyes and closed his throat. “Plagg!” he pleaded in a cracked voice._

“ _Didn’t you say you missed your mother? Don’t you think she missed you?”_

_Adrien wailed, tears streaming down his cheeks. He knew it was useless to struggle, but sometimes Plagg could be persuaded with tears._

_It didn’t work though, not this time. Plagg watched him wail and beat his hands against the ground, and scream words like “I hate you!” and “Betrayer!” until the storm petered out._

_Finally, he wiped his nose on his sleeve and sniffed. “Come with me at least?”_

_Another slow blink. Then Plagg emerged from the trees, padded over, and pulled him to his feet. He leaned down to wipe the last of the tears from his face._

“ _Only to the edge of the woods,” Plagg said. “Then you’re on your own.”_

_Adrien nodded and clutched Plagg’s hand. They set off together, and Adrien watched the sun rise higher and higher until it shone through the canopy like a thousand bridges to the sky._

“ _Up there,” Plagg said, stopping in the last of the shadows. The path crossed another, at which the woods stopped. Up a hill lay a windmill, but its roof was caved in and weeds climbed the foot of it._

_Adrien gasped in horror. “That’s-!”_

“ _Hush.” Plagg pointed, and they watched as a tall figure with a long, gold braid and an oddly-shaped dress emerged from behind the windmill and came to sit on the front step. She gazed towards the woods, as though waiting for something._

“ _She’s waiting for you,” Plagg said. “Go on.”_

_Adrien swallowed, then turned and threw his arms around Plagg’s middle. The older boy squeezed him back, and Adrien felt a drop of something warm land in his hair. Plagg patted his back, then turned him towards the hill and gave him a little push. Adrien took a step forward, and then two, hesitating._

_He spun. “Maybe I could-” he began, but the woods were empty. Cold fear seized him. “Plagg?” he called, knowing there would be no reply. “Plagg!”_

_There was a sharp gasp somewhere behind him. He turned again to find the lady staring straight at him. Even at this distance, he could see the tears sparkling in her eyes, and suddenly, all he wanted was to go home. He started up the hill, slowly, dragging his feet and wiping his nose on his sleeve, and he stopped a few steps in front of her. She wasn’t the way he remembered, but he didn’t remember much of her anyway. The Glimmerlands did strange things to your head, Plagg said._

_Another sob racked his chest, and then her arms were around him, soothing and gentle._

“ _There, my sweet, there, don’t cry any more,” she said, in a voice that betrayed her own tears. “I’ve found you! I’ve found you, and I’ll never let anyone take you again. You’re here, now, love. You’re home.”_

—

A scream shattered Adrien’s dream, shards of colour exploding into darkness. He leapt to his feet, banged his head on a ceiling that spilled dust and dirt on his shoulders, and fell painfully back to his knees. His hands brushed something small and soft and  _struggling_ -

“Tikki?” A familiar voice emerged from the darkness, and light flared, revealing a cat - _Plagg,_ he remembered - holding something beneath his paws with apparent difficulty. The screaming was coming from him, although now it sounded more like a yowl. The girl - Blue, he recalled, or perhaps Marinette - squinted down at Plagg, then gasped, “ _Tikki!_ ”

She lunged at Plagg. The match dropped and went out, plunging them back into darkness, but Adrien heard Blue gasp in pain and surprise.

“ _Tikki!_ ” Plagg snarled. “I knew I smelled Seelie stench in here!”

Suddenly there was much less room in their burrow, and Adrien felt a small, thin hand shove him back against the wall with surprising force. A second later Plagg’s soft body slammed into him and lay, stunned, in his lap.

“Blue, let’s go!” A high voice chimed, and a gap opened up in the darkness, soon obscured by the shadows of _two_ girls scrambling out.

“But I think -!” Blue started, but Tikki shushed her and dragged her out. Their footsteps faded quickly.

Plagg lay panting for a moment.

“Plagg,” Adrien said. “What on _earth_ just happened?”

“Old friend,” Plagg grumbled, shaking his head so hard his ears flapped. “Hopefully they’ll stay away from us now.”

Adrien carefully slipped Plagg off his lap to the floor and sat up on his knees to push the grass aside, ignoring how it glowed and sang when he touched it. The two girls had slowed upon reaching the tree that had tried to devour them the night before, and were creeping past it.

“I’m almost certain Blue is an old friend of mine, too” Adrien said, his heart sinking as he watched their silhouettes disappear behind the tree.

“Even if she is, you shouldn’t say her real name,” Plagg reminded him sternly. “The walls have ears here, sometimes literally. Besides, she’s with _Tikki_.” He spat the name like a bitter poison.

“Who’s Tikki? Didn’t you say she was an old friend?”

“’Old’ as in we used to be friends,” Plagg grumbled. “Now we are not. Let’s get out of here,” he added, leaping through the entrance in a black blur and landing in human form on the songrass outside.

Adrien pulled himself out of the hole and stretched. He ached in a thousand places, and was beginning to think coming here was a mistake. If Blue  _was_ Marinette, then she had probably come to find him. But then, why hadn’t she stayed with them? Was the glamour on him really that strong? Had Plagg effectively scared her away, or had the other fae, Tikki - who seemed to be guiding her the way Plagg was guiding him - told her to be wary of them? Or maybe she wasn’t here for him after all. He’d often read that time worked differently between the human and faerie realms. How much time had passed in the human world since he’d vanished before Marinette’s eyes? Seconds? Days? Months?

How much time had passed  _here?_ The sun was in the exact same place it had been when he’d arrived, tucked just out of sight beneath the western hills. The only difference was -

“Th-the moon?” Adrien stammered, pointing at the giant golden orb in the eastern sky. “Is that -”

“Yeah, don’t stare at that either, kit.”

Adrien turned to Plagg incredulously.

“Surely you’re not telling me that the _moon_ wants to eat me.”

Plagg shrugged. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but basically, yeah.”

Adrien opened his mouth to object (because out of everything he’d seen so far, somehow  _the moon_ wanting to harm him was the one thing he couldn’t accept), when a rumbling sound caught his attention.

“What’s that?” he asked. It was too early in the - well, it was too early for another near-death experience.

Plagg’s eyes were wide and he was staring at the ground beneath his bare feet, hands splayed and curled like claws. “I don’t know, but it’s big and it’s coming from underneath us,” he muttered. “Let’s -”

The ground exploded to their left, upending the monster tree and spraying rocks, dirt, and clumps of songrass everywhere. Adrien fell backwards in shock and nearly vanished down the burrow again, but Plagg was already yanking him away by the wrist. As he turned to run, Adrien caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a giant jungle vine emerging from the earth.

“What is that!” Adrien shouted as they fled.

“I don’t know!”

“ _You don’t know?!_ ”

“That’s not normal here!” Plagg panted, his voice half an octave higher than usual. “I’ve never seen _that_ in my life!”

Panic froze Adrien’s heart, and he barely registered that they’d caught up with Blue and Tikki. The tree monster scampered past them on its many roots, too busy fleeing to bother with them.

“Blue! _Blue!_ ” Tikki was pulling her along, pleading, but Blue’s eyes were on the vines, and all she could do was stumble along backwards, too slow to get away in time. Tikki turned to them as they caught up, huge eyes pleading. “Please help her!”

Plagg’s grip tightened on Adrien’s wrist, but Adrien’s other hand was free, and he grabbed hold of Blue’s other wrist. To his surprise, she shook him off, still staring at the vines that rose, writhing, before them. Her lips parted, and she mouthed a word that resembled “Papa?”

Adrien spun to look properly at the vines, and sure enough, riding them like a wave, was a huge, shadowy  _someone_ \- though the resemblance to Blue was non-existent. Even in his panic, Adrien’s heart managed to sink a little. If  _that_ was Blue’s father, then she couldn’t be Marinette.

The creature caught sight of them and roared. They barely had time to turn and run again before vines crashed down around them, capturing everyone but Tikki, who zipped away in the form of a flying insect. Adrien felt Blue’s hand grasp his own, and he gripped hers back as vines wrapped around the three of them, squeezing them together and bringing them up to eye-level.

Up close the creature did look more human - if humans came in such sizes. Dark grey skin strained over muscles so huge they were grotesque, and pointed white teeth poked out from beneath a thick black beard. Yellow eyes glared at them, then blinked wider. And wider.

“Hnette?” The creature growled, in a voice so low they felt it in their bones.

“Papa?” Blue’s voice was barely louder than a whisper. “What happened to you?”

The creature frowned, his glance shifting from Blue to Adrien, who saw a spark of something unexpectedly warm there and wondered if, perhaps, Blue might convince her father to not kill them.

Then his gaze turned on Plagg, and he scowled.

“I’ll be back for you, kit!” Plagg said, sounding as terrified as Adrien felt, and with that, he turned back into a cat and fled before the Blue’s father could react. Adrien fell into the space Plagg had left, scrabbling for purchase, but the vines shifted and grew around him until they blocked out all the light.

“Ma- Blue!” he cried in panic as her hand slipped from his.

“Sunny!”

He groped his way towards her voice as the vines twisted and tangled beneath his hands and feet, calling her name and listening for her reply, until finally he found her hand through a hole in the vines.

“Blue,” he panted. “Is that - your father?”

“He doesn’t usually look like _that_ ,” Blue said, “and I’ve no idea how he got to - er, how he got here.”

The pair gripped each others’ forearms, afraid they might be separated again, but the vines had stopped shifting. In fact, from the way his stomach dropped, it almost felt as though they were being carried  _upwards_ .

Now he knew they weren’t going to be eaten (at least not yet), Adrien became aware of something, a detail, tickling the back of his mind. Something to do with hands.

It wasn’t vital to their immediate survival, though, so he ignored it.

“Do you think your father might be persuaded to set us down? Gently?”

Blue was quiet for a moment before he heard her take a deep breath.

“PAPA?” she shouted, loud enough to make Adrien jump. “COULD YOU PUT US DOWN GENTLY, PLEASE?”

Her words rang and faded into darkness. There was no reply.

“PAPA?” she tried again, even louder. “PAPA! _PAPAAA!!_ ”

There was no answer. Her fingers dug into his skin, and the niggling question at the back of his mind got louder.

“Maybe if we explore a little, we can find our way out,” Blue suggested.

Adrien’s fingers spasmed around her arm, and she ran her thumb over the skin of his forearm reassuringly.

“Don’t you think we should, maybe, stay together?” Adrien asked.

“He seems to like you,” Blue said. “Perhaps he recognizes you from somewhere.”

It almost sounded like a question. Adrien’s heart beat faster from something other than fear.

“Perhaps,” he echoed uncertainly.

“I can see a light on my side,” she added. “It might be the way out.”

Her thumb skittered back and forth over his skin, a little too fast to soothe.

“Alright,” Adrien said. “Just… don’t get hurt, okay?”

Another squeeze. “I’ll do my best,” she said, and let go.

Adrien listened to the scuffling sounds of her clambering over the vines for a moment before pulling his hand back through the gap. To his surprise, the light she’d spoken about shone through it, just bright enough to light up the space he was in. The vines formed a closed chamber, and for a moment Adrien’s breath caught in his throat as he realized how small it was - then he spotted a shadowy tunnel of sorts running upwards to his right. Taking several deep breaths, he cautiously began to climb it. The light quickly faded, leaving him in total darkness again, and it soon became steep and narrow enough to make his heart thud unpleasantly against his ribcage, like an animal trying to escape.

_I shouldn’t fall at least_ , he thought as he braced his legs and back against the vines and tried to ignore how much he wanted to scream.

The higher he climbed, the steeper and narrower it got, but just as Adrien was about to give up, he saw something. The vines right in front of him were dimly lit, which meant he surely must be close to an exit. He squeezed his way through them, and emerged into the blessed, moonlit night. The screams in his head quieted as he breathed and looked around, only to start up again when he saw how far from the ground they were.

Footsteps sounded behind him, and Adrien craned his neck to see Blue’s father towering over him with his hands on his hips.

“Back!” he barked, pointing down towards the tunnel Adrien had come from. Adrien felt the vines shift beneath him and panicked.

“NO! Please, monsieur, I’m afraid of closed spaces!”

The vines paused, then writhed back to their original position, minus one, which slithered around his waist and held him in place.

“N’t move ‘en,” the monster grunted, and turned away.

“Um, Monsieur!” Adrien shouted, grabbing the man’s hand unthinkingly. He plastered a smile on his face, the one his father had taught him to greet guests with. “Please, could you put us down!”

The huge, thick hand slipped through Adrien’s fingers. The question at the back of his mind  _screamed._

Blue’s father frowned and shook his head. “Home,” he said and, to Adrien’s surprise, reached down and ruffled his hair with surprising gentleness before turning away again.

The question that had been nagging at Adrien became a truth, and slammed to the front of mind with perfect clarity.

_His fingers only have three knuckles each._

_Blue’s fingers were the same when I held her hand._

Adrien’s heart leapt, but he tried to contain himself. Plagg had told him things could be glamoured to feel different, so it wouldn’t do to get his hopes up  _too_ high. Either Blue was indeed a changeling and had glamoured her hand to feel human in order to trick him, or she was Marinette.

Which meant that somehow, the creature that had kidnapped them was Tom Dupain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, humans have three knuckles on each finger. We always forget the one at the bottom that connects to the palm. Fae in this universe have four, because reasons.


End file.
